Editing Battle of Adrianople (section)

==Composition of the Gothic forces==
{{See also|Gothic and Vandal warfare}}
There were probably two main Gothic armies south of the Danube. Fritigern led one army, largely recruited from the Therving exiles, while Alatheus and Saphrax led another army, largely recruited from the Greuthung exiles.

Fritigern brought most if not all of his fighters to the battle and appears to have led the force the Romans first encountered. Alatheus and Saphrax brought their cavalry into action "descending like a thunderbolt" against the Romans. These forces included Alans.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

The Gothic armies were mostly infantry, with some cavalry, which was significant in the Battle of Adrianople. Some older works{{which|date=February 2019}} attribute the Gothic victory to overwhelming Gothic numbers, to Gothic cavalry, and sometimes to Gothic use of [[stirrup]]s.<ref>Isaac Asimov, 1991, "Asimov's Chronology of the World", pp. 102–05, "350 to 400 CE"</ref> More recent scholarly works mostly agree that the armies were similarly sized, that the Gothic infantry was more decisive than their cavalry and that neither the Romans nor the Goths used stirrups until the 6th century,<ref name="Bishop, M.C. 2006, p.123">Bishop, M.C., and Coulston, J.C.N., 2006, ''Roman Military Equipment: From the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome,'' p. 123.</ref> probably brought by the [[Avars (Carpathians)|Avars]].<ref>McGeer, Eric, 2008, ''Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Byzantine Warfare in the Tenth Century,'' p. 211.</ref>

Ammianus records that the Roman scouts estimated 10,000 Gothic troops, but Ammianus dismissed this as an underestimate.<ref name="Marcellinus Chapter 12" /> This appears to be due to Alatheus and Saphrax's forces being away when the Roman scouts estimated the Goths' numbers before battle. Several modern historians have estimated the strength of the Gothic armies at 12,000–15,000.<ref>Delbrück, Hans, (trans. Renfroe, Walter), 1980, ''The Barbarian Invasions'', Lincoln & London, [[University of Nebraska Press]], p. 276.</ref>

Ammianus notes the important role of the Gothic cavalry. [[Charles Oman]], believing that the cavalry were the majority of the Gothic force, interpreted the Battle of Adrianople as the beginning of the dominance of cavalry over infantry for the next thousand years.<ref>Oman, C.W.C., 1953, ''The Art of War in the Middle Ages'', pp. 5–6</ref> Some other historians have taken the same view.<ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=Paul|title=100 Decisive Battles|year=1999|publisher=Oxford|isbn=978-0-19-514366-9|pages=83–86}}</ref> T. S. Burns and other recent historians argue that the infantry were the vast majority of the Gothic force, and that the battle had little effect on the relationship between infantry and cavalry.<ref>Macdowall, Simon, 2001, ''Adrianople AD 378: The Goths Crush Rome's Legions'', p. 88</ref>